


Pulsar

by Silmariën (Starrie_Wolf)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: BOM!Keith, Canon Rewrite, Cultural Differences, Keith's ass in spandex, M/M, Nb Lions, Sheith Big Bang 2017, Shiro tries to focus, There is no gender binary in space, Wait wrong focus, genderfluid pidge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-20
Updated: 2017-08-20
Packaged: 2018-12-16 20:04:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11836062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starrie_Wolf/pseuds/Silmari%C3%ABn
Summary: When he signed up for the Kerberos mission, Shiro wasn't expecting to be abducted by aliens, or to become embroiled in an intergalactic war, or to end up leading a ragtag team of four Earthlings and one part-Galra rebel fighter.That last one, though... that he could get used to.It’s got absolutely nothing to do with the way Keith wanders around the Castle in spandex. Not at all.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Chapters 1-5 are rated Teen  
> Chapter 6 is rated Explicit  
> Art is found in Chapter 4 (reblog [HERE](http://smoke-and-oakum.tumblr.com/post/164424655790/my-art-for-the-sheithbigbang-fic))
> 
> With great thanks to caustically for hosting the Sheith Big Bang 2k17; my artist, Heather, who was kind enough to do the gorgeous art for this fic; and the Sheith Loves You Baby Discord server for cheerleading all the way!

_Pain. He –_

_“Zarkon has located the Blue Lion on your planet Earth. You must get it before he does.”_

_A Galra soldier lunges into view, his knife a blur._

_Shiro flinches on instinct, bringing his arms up to protect his head, even though he knows they would’ve been certain to use cuffs that can stand up to even Druid-enhanced _saikya _–_

_But his arms come up easily, free of restraints._

_“W-what are you doing?”_

_Stupid question. But then –_

_“I’ve planted a bomb to cover your escape.” The Galra yanks off his helmet to reveal oddly furless skin, in a shade of pale lavender rather than the deep purple of a usual Galra. His voice, now unaltered by the mic in-built into the helmet, is also a pitch higher than expected. “Get to a pod. Now.”_

_“Who are you?”_

_“I am Ulaz. Now come on!”_

_The floor is unforgiving against his bare feet._

_Shiro staggers, but Ulaz is there to grab his arm, to haul him up and through the doorway, to flatten him against the wall when the heavy tread of metal stomp past the alcove that barely conceals them._

_Ulaz begins speaking again, voice low and hurried. “Zarkon will know that I released you, so I must disappear. But if you survive, go to the coordinates in your arm.” He pauses, and his next words have the finality of a death-knell. “The Blade of Marmora is with you.”_

_He doesn’t understand._

_“Why are you helping me?”_

_Ulaz visibly hesitates, and Shiro can’t help but look back at him, at this stranger who’s about to throw away his entire cover for the sake of someone he’d never known._

_“You remind me of someone I admire greatly,” Ulaz finally says, voice stilted. “And I should hate to see his planet destroyed before he ever gets the chance to find his family.”_

_ Admire _ _, Shiro notes distantly. Present tense. Then the rest of Ulaz’s sentence hits him. “ His planet?” But that must mean –_

_Ulaz doesn’t answer._

_“Hurry, Earth needs you. We all do.”_

☆☆☆☆☆

The first thing that hit him was the smell.

Shiro came to with a jolt, blinking furiously. His lungs _burned_ , and he doubled over, heaving for breath. The smell, like antiseptic strong enough to peel paint, lingered in his throat.

What –

This wasn’t a Galra ship.

He swung his gaze around wildly, staring at but not _comprehending_ the overturned metal table, the trays of metal instruments scattered across the floor, the human figures slumped like broken dolls against the walls.

Shiro swallowed, and tentatively looked down at his own hands. They were clean of blood, but the skin around his left wrist was bruised red, a circular band stark against his skin.

He’d been _tied down_.

Even the mere thought of it was enough to make Shiro’s heart race, and he pressed his left hand to his chest, willing himself to calm down. He was safe. He was on Earth, had to be, but where –

He had to get out of there.

His legs didn’t want to listen, at first, but the next few steps came easier, until he was sprinting across the room, leaping over sharp pointy things whose function he didn’t want to think about at the moment –

_He had to warn someone._

They were wearing Garrison uniforms, he remembered, the men who’d yanked him out of the escape pod, who’d strapped him onto the table without giving him a single indication that they’d heard his pleas.

He must have crash-landed near the Garrison – but how?

And why?

Something exploded in the distance, and Shiro flinched back, his right arm coming up automatically. Its sickly violet glow made him jerk back, startled, but there were more important things at hand than figuring out how he could do that.

Things like the small blur of brown charging right at him, grabbing him by the collar.

“Come _on_! Let’s get out of here!”

That was a sentiment he could definitely get behind.

☆☆☆☆☆

Their names, Shiro learnt while stumbling along in the dark, were Pidge, Lance and Hunk.

“What happened to the Kerberos crew?” Pidge demanded, the moment they lost their pursuers in the dark. Shiro had no idea where they were, but evidently Pidge didn’t care that they were potentially lost, wandering around some kind of cave system in the desert.

“I –” he stuttered, but at the same time one of the other boys struck a flint, and the firelight threw Pidge’s face into sharp relief, derailing his thoughts in an instant. “You’re Matt’s younger – sibling.”

“His brother,” Pidge snapped, eyes narrowing. At the revelation or the slight hesitance in his tone, Shiro couldn’t tell, but none of that mattered.

“You look just like Matt,” he said instead, ignoring the fact that he was fairly sure Matt had only ever mentioned having a _sister_.

Pidge sniffed, one hand still wrapped around Shiro’s collar. “Well?” he demanded.

“We were attacked,” Shiro said plainly. There were a disturbing number of holes in his memory, especially the later parts of his captivity, but the beginning? “We were barely on Kerberos for a day when this alien ship came out of nowhere and grabbed all of us.”

He remembered every bit of it.

Unlike the other two boys, Pidge didn’t scoff at his words. “These aliens, were they called Galra?”

Shiro jerked back, eyes wide. It couldn’t have – was he too late –

“How do you know that word?”

Pidge shrugged uncomfortably, clutching his laptop closer to his chest. “I rigged up a one-way satellite dish that lets me pick up nearby transmission frequencies, and recently if I fiddle around with the frequencies, I can pick up words that don’t sound like something human vocal cords can produce. Like _Galra_.” His pronunciation was odd, with soft rounded vowels rather than the harsh biting syllables Shiro was used to hearing, but it was definitely the same word.

“How near is _nearby_?” he demanded, almost tripping over a loose stone. He caught himself on the wall, the _saikya_ making an eerie, screeching noise as it scraped against rock, but he paid it no heed.

“Somewhere in our solar system,” Pidge answered, a little cautiously, but at least he didn’t back away from Shiro like the other two boys did.

Shiro closed his eyes. So close. _Too_ close.

“We have to find Voltron.”

_Before they do._

☆☆☆☆☆

Shiro had long lost count of how far they’d walked, but it was easy, far easier to put one foot ahead of the other, to keep moving ahead, because if he stopped – he couldn’t, he _shouldn’t_ – if the very act of moving forward didn’t take up all of his concentration, then –

He shouldn’t have dragged the three cadets along with him, really, just another mistake –

No, no. Keep walking. Don’t think about it.

“I’m hungry.” Right on cue, Hunk’s stomach grumbled. “Anyone’s got a candy bar?”

Shiro blinked, a little thrown, when those pleading eyes were turned on him. “Um, no?” Where could he possibly have been hiding one, anyway?

Hunk wilted visibly, and Lance patted him on the shoulder. “I’m sure we’ll be out of here soon!”

Pidge sighed.

“Let’s just keep moving.”

☆☆☆☆☆

Voltron was a _giant robot_.

Made up of five… Lions? Were there lions on alien planets too? Were they all ­ _called_ lions? The potential convergent evolution theories would’ve kept Matt up for –

No. Don’t think about him.

Think about the now, and the eerie tear in the fabric of space right in front of them, and the three cadets waiting for instructions, silent for once.

“Whatever is happening, the lion knows more than we do. I say we trust it, but we’re a team now. We should decide together.”

His fingers tapped out a rhythm against the back of Lance’s seat.

_Please, let me do one thing right. Let me keep someone safe._

☆☆☆☆☆

What the Blue Lion wanted them to find turned out to be an alien princess frozen in a cryopod, like some crazy version of Captain America. Shiro had given up on his life making sense ever since he was captured by aliens, but _still_.

“Who are you? Where is King Alfor? What are you doing in my castle?”

At least she wasn’t actively attacking them, not like the Galra would – not like they _did_ , to Sam and Matt and… and Sam was a researcher through-and-through, and Matt was never the best at _fighting_ , wasn’t completely hopeless at it but how would they even _start_ to fight against captors from a race both physically stronger than them _and_ armed with laser guns? Not even Shiro, with his black belt in jujutsu, and he’d _tried_ –

“It can’t _be_!”

Fuck. He was drifting again.

“We’ve been asleep for _ten thousand years_.”

Ten thousand?

And maybe it was banal, trite, but honestly the first thing that popped up in Shiro’s mind was, _Why was a language belonging to a race that’s been presumed dead ten thousand years still installed in every universal translator?_

Apparently Zarkon was ten thousand years old, too, and they’d just stumbled blindly head-first into a millennia-old war.

Shiro watched as the three cadets wandered around the room, touching everything in sight like they were _tourists_ , wide-eyed with wonder, so innocent that his heart _clenched_ , because he didn’t know how to keep them safe on his own.

He only hoped he didn’t have to.


	2. Chapter 2

“Pidge, what’s your ETA?”

“We’re in,” Pidge reported, just as Shiro shimmied through the hole in the cruiser. He had _no idea_ what those bayards were made of, but man, Pidge was slicing through the reinforced metal like _butter_. He dropped into a crouch, Galra arm at the ready, as Pidge resealed the hole behind them.

That part of the ship was eerily silent, nothing but the hum and buzz of the generators, and the occasional arc of electricity skipping high above them. Shiro eyed those structures warily, noting how they seemed to resemble lightning conductors. Was the whole room a giant generator, a bomb waiting to explode, and was _that_ why there was nothing else down here, not even a maintenance droid?

“We should get out of here,” he murmured, pressing a thumb against the mic in his helmet so that the words remained private. No sense in distracting Lance and Hunk, not when they were – from the sound of things – taking some heavy fire. Sendak must have figured out their deception.

Pidge scanned over the room, frowning as he evidently came to the same conclusion, and they scarpered towards the nearest door they could see.

Luck wasn’t on their side.

They burst out into a purple-lit corridor straight out of one of Shiro’s nightmares, and the sight of it was like a punch to the gut, a blow he never saw coming, and the instant visceral _terror_ was so overwhelming that he nearly missed the three sentries at the far end of the corridor.

Pidge spat a startled curse, his green bayard flashing out, knocking two of the sentries into each other. They fell with a loud clatter that made Shiro flinch, even as his prosthetic arm flashed up by instinct, deflecting a stray shot that would have clipped his helmet. He had no desire to test the integrity of the Altean armour _so_ soon.

_One second. Two seconds._

Droids, by the sound of them, which meant they were on one of the lowest maintenance levels, the places where no proper Galra ever went.

_Seven. Eight._

It made sense, really, given that Pidge had literally cut a hole in the underbelly of the battlecruiser, and they’d come through there.

_Fifteen. Sixteen._

“In here!” Shiro hissed, blinding slapping his metal hand against the wall, where he remembered the control panels usually were. He caught Pidge with his other hand, dragging the protesting Paladin through, just as his mental clock ticked over to twenty.

_Come on, come on…_

The doors swooshed closed again, but not before Shiro spotted the next droid patrol rounding the corner, guns in hand. He staggered backwards until his back hit the wall, his metal arm making a loud clank, as he bit back a moan and fought to keep himself standing.

He was okay. This was just some – some kind of _space_ _closet_. There were no guards coming to drag him back to his cell, or to the Arena. He was free, free to leave this ship any time he _needed_ to, once they found the Red Lion.

“Shiro? Shiro, are you hurt?” whispered Pidge, urgently. Shiro spared him a glance, but then had to force himself to look away again, as Pidge’s face swam in his vision and blurred into Matt, bruised and bloodied.

He squeezed his eyes shut.

He was _okay_.

 “I –” he choked out, but the memories were resurging with a vengeance, a tidal wave threatening to pull him under.

His fingers tapped a quick staccato beat against the metal wall, unable to help himself.

“You know this place,” Pidge said, with a disconcerting degree of certainty. “You’ve _been_ here before.”

“Yes,” Shiro murmured, soft as a confession.

_Ulaz shoving him out of the door, barefoot and still dressed in the loose medical gown he had to wear for examinations. In the distance, there was an explosion._

_“ **Run**!”_

He dug his metal fingers into his leg, a sort of dull pressure he could feel even through the Paladin armour.

_Focus, Shiro._

“– so that means your other crewmembers, they might be held captive here,” Pidge was saying, words tripping over one another in his haste, in his growing excitement. “We’ve got to rescue them!”

Hope bloomed in his chest, for a single bright moment, before reality came crashing down.

Shiro shook his head, very slowly, and _hated_ the way it made Pidge freeze mid-word. “They took Commander Holt and Matt away,” he said, quietly. “I don’t know where, but one of the guards mentioned a mining colony.”

 _I don’t think they’re on this ship_ , he didn’t say, but knew Pidge heard the words loud and clear anyway.

“I’m still going to check out the prison cells,” Pidge said, jutting out his chin. His eyes were fever-bright, and there was a defiance in them that Shiro had never seen from Matt before; but then, he’d never been in a similar situation _with_ Matt before. “Maybe one of the other prisoners know where they’ve been taken.”

“Pidge –” Shiro began, but the teenager would have none of it.

“I’ve been searching _everywhere_ for my family!” he snarled, fists clenched in front of him, his knuckles bloodless. “And I’m not going to give up looking when I’m this close. I _won’t_!”

Shiro looked into Pidge’s eyes, and swallowed the rebuttal at the tip of his tongue. Who was he to judge the lengths someone should go to for the sake of their family? Who was he to deny Matt and Commander Holt potential rescue, when he himself was freed? He wouldn’t, _couldn’t_ do them the disservice.

“The prisoners are kept all the way at the back of the ship, on the opposite end from the hangar,” he said instead. “To prevent any escapee from finding a pod, I guess.”

Pidge’s eyes lit up, and he nodded, a determined glint in his eyes. “Got it.” He glanced at the closet door again, hands fluttering through the air like he was creating a spatial map, trying to orientate himself. Catching sight of Shiro’s worried look, he waved a hand. “Go get the Red Lion. I’ll be fine.”

They both pressed an ear to the door, waited for the sentries to stomp past, and then Pidge flung the door open.

They froze.

Shiro burst into action, grabbing the little hoverbot and forcing its camera eye down, hoping that it hadn’t had a chance to scan their identities yet. “We should get out of here,” he hissed in as low a voice as he could manage. “That thing saw us.”

“Hmmm.”

Shiro had long learnt to be wary of that noncommittal, _interested_ tone. On Matt, that particular noise generally heralded either something absolutely fantastic, or a total disaster.

Sometimes both.

 _Usually_ both.

“Wait. I think this might come in handy.”

Shiro glanced both ways down the corridors again, fingers drumming restlessly against the wall. “We don’t have the time for this,” he cautioned, but Pidge ignored him, rooting through the hoverbot’s metal casing.

“I think I can…” he trailed off, nimble fingers sorting through the alien circuitry with an ease that could only have come from natural talent. “Yes, yeah, that could work…”

Shiro took a few steps away, in the direction of the cells, and then a few steps back. “Pidge…” he warned.

“Hang on a second!”

He bit back the _how long more_ , swallowed it and pretended it didn’t taste like ashes in his mouth, while Pidge cooed softly to a machine and did _something_ he wouldn’t even pretend to understand to it.

“Done!” Pidge declared. “Now, I’ll just reset the controls…” he slapped at something on the hoverbot, “and it’s working for us!” He turned to Shiro, his grin sharp and bright on his face, looking so much like Matt on the cusp of a successful prank that it _hurt_.

“Great job, Pidge,” he choked out, trying to keep his face impassive, and he must’ve been successful, for Pidge didn’t even give him a worried frown this time.

“I’m going to call you ‘Rover’,” he cooed to the hoverbot, petting its chassis, “and you’re going to open all the doors for me!”

That… was actually an excellent idea. Shiro couldn’t believe he didn’t think of it earlier: only Galra blood or Galra tech could open the doors, and if they split up, Pidge would have neither of those.

Smiling came a little easier, now, and Shiro gave in to the urge to lay a hand on Pidge’s shoulder, though he couldn’t make his throat work.

_Stay safe, Katie._

☆☆☆☆☆

_“Once we get you in, you’ll be able to feel its presence, and, like, track it down.”_

Easy for them to say, Shiro thought, as he peered down yet another identical corridor. If there was something calling to him, he certainly wasn’t hearing it.

 _Patience yields focus_ , he reminded himself. If Lance, Hunk _and_ Pidge were all telling him the same thing, there must’ve been something to it. He’d seen Voltron in his visions, too, like the three of them; there was a Lion waiting for him. He couldn’t doubt that.

_Think, Shiro._

Well, if he couldn’t sense his Lion, searching logically should help. A Lion was _huge_ , far bigger than any Galra fighter jet he’d ever seen, and there were very few places on a battlecruiser that could feasibly hold one.

To the hangars it was.

Shiro ducked into an alcove, out of the way of another droid patrol. By his mental estimate, he ought to be pretty near the hangars by now, assuming he hadn’t gotten turned around too much.

The hallway swam.

Shiro cursed softly, squeezing his eyes shut for a brief millisecond, and then opening them again. The déjà vu was so strong in this place he could almost hear the explosions in the distance, the clatter of metal feet behind him as the droid sentries gave chase. Had it really only been less than twenty-four hours since he’d come this exact same way, looking for an escape pod?

As though mocking him, the next door he passed had edges still blackened by laser fire, and a dent in the centre where some unfortunate droid had crashed into it.

Shiro barely spared it a glance as he moved on.

Even in that disoriented state, he was sure he would have _noticed_ if that hangar had been occupied by a giant robotic Lion. Red must be elsewhere.

He tried not to think about the fact that surely, _surely_ he must’ve felt some kind of connection by now.

The next door, when he eased it open cautiously, seemed to be another maintenance closet of some kind, full of spare parts.

Shiro slid the door shut and moved on.

☆☆☆☆☆

The sudden blare of alarms almost made him trip, and Shiro cursed, diving back behind a pillar as the sound of running footsteps came nearer. Someone – Pidge? – must’ve tripped the alarms, and soon the whole ship would be on high alert.

He _had_ to find the Red Lion before that.

“Docking Bay Five!” one of the passing sentries barked out, voice guttural in a way the mechanised voices of the droids could never be.

Shiro chanced a glance out from his hiding place, because either his auditory hallucinations were getting worse, now, or there was far, far more than a single patrol headed in that direction.

It was the latter.

If they were sending the Galra troops down en masse, and not just the usual droid sentries that patrolled this level…

Shiro waited just another few seconds just to be safe, his gloved fingers drumming an impatient beat against his leg, and then hurried after them.

The doors to Docking Bay Five were flung wide open, the last of the soldiers disappearing into the hallway as he rounded the corner. Shiro crept up to the doors, peering cautiously into the room.

What first caught his eye was the majestic figure of a robotic Lion, towering far above any of the Galra ringed around its feet, a barrier of some sort shielding it from their greedy, grasping claws. It didn’t even deign to spare them a glance, staring straight ahead at the far wall, as though trying to _will_ the doors beneath its paws open.

_Just a bit more, Red. I’m coming._

The hiss-pop of laser fire drew his attention away from the watchful Lion, to the Galra soldiers in the hangar. It was a cavernous room, the Galra dwarfed by its sheer size, but Shiro counted dozens of droids and a handful more actual soldiers, all of them firing on the Lion.

Their distraction meant it was easy for him to slip into the room, to sequester himself behind a pile of dusty crates in the corner, and even to climb to the top for a better view.

The sentries weren’t firing on the Lion’s particle barrier, as he’d first thought – they were firing on another Galra soldier in their midst, and only the stray shots were striking the Lion. He squinted, confused. Insurrection within the ranks?

Or… another Ulaz?

The rebel was dressed in the full-body armour of a typical Galra soldier, so Shiro couldn’t really tell, but he thought – and it might be just his imagination, or the size of the room playing tricks on his eyes, but they seemed to be _smaller_ than a usual Galra?

Ulaz had been a full head taller than him, Shiro remembered, just like any other Galra he’d seen, but he’d also been notably furless and a pale lavender. Maybe this rebel was a Galra hybrid with a much smaller species? He wouldn’t be surprised. After ten thousand years, it would be weirder if there _weren’t_ mixed-heritage Galra everywhere.

Much smaller, and much more agile, Shiro decided. Their skill spoke for itself; even hopelessly outmatched, they wove between the droids, their body twisting in a sinuous dance that had Shiro almost mesmerised. Even as he watched, enraptured, the rebel _slid_ between two drones, causing them to take each other out in a shower of violet sparks.

_Beautiful._

“Shoot him, you useless fools!”

Reality reasserted itself violently. The Galra troops further away from the melee readied their laser guns, sights trained on the rebel.

“No!” Shiro shouted, and maybe it was _stupid_ , even _suicidal_ , but he didn’t care, he was beyond caring – he leapt from the top of the crates onto the nearest Galra soldier, and his arm came alight at a single thought.

Metal _screeched_ , but the Druid-infused _saikya_ slashed through their armour as easily as Pidge’s bayard had through the ship’s hull, and he took advantage of their momentary confusion to hurl the soldier into a group, taking all of them down.

He didn’t have the time to check on the little rebel, now, not when the Galra soldiers were shaking off their surprise, guns swerving in his direction –

 _Good._ A few more guns at him meant a few less in the rebel’s direction, and Shiro was _nearer_ , was _in their midst_ , could use them as shields against each other. He dove onto the floor and rolled aside, behind yet another crate, feeling the laser fire streak over his head, so close he could almost _feel_ the sear of heat through his armour.

The open doors were just scant feet away, maybe he could draw a few of them off –

There was a horrendous shrieking noise coming from behind – no, _beneath_ – him, and only his proximity to the doorway saved him, letting him cling on for dear life to the edges as the hangar doors blew wide open. He could hear the soldiers behind him screaming as the vacuum took them, but it was all he could do to even _hold on_ himself, his Galra arm whirring with the effort. Thank goodness he never deactivated his helmet shield, or he’d be sucking space vacuum with the rest of them now.

The Lion! What about –

Gritting his teeth, Shiro chanced a look behind him.

The hangar doors were fully open, now, the icy vacuum of space whipping through the entire docking bay. Even the crates bolted to the floor were creaking dangerously, threatening to go flying at any moment.

Amidst the chaos, the Red Lion stood firm, a lighthouse in the storm, like the winds were but a gentle breeze.

Shiro dug his fingers deeper into the doorway, squinting.

There was a tiny figure clinging onto a structure in front of the Lion. Some kind of control panel? Shiro wasn’t surprised he hadn’t been able to see it earlier, not with the melee going on in the middle of the hangar.

The rebel.

They – he? The Galra had called him a ‘he’ – must’ve been the one to do this.

It was a reckless, _stupid_ move.

Shiro couldn’t agree more with it.

Even as he watched, dangling helplessly, the rebel shifted minutely, one hand moving over the control panel like he was looking for the _close_ button.

 _Come on,_ Shiro urged him, silently.

So intent was he on the controls, that he never saw one of the crates finally tearing loose from the floor, and go hurtling straight in his direction.

“ _Watch out_!”

The raging winds tore the sound of his voice away the moment it left his throat, choking Shiro in his despair. Belatedly, he realised he’d let go of the door frame and had his left arm outstretched, as though he could’ve grabbed the rebel before he fell, even with the great distance between them.

He didn’t know if the little rebel screamed as the crate smashed straight into his defensive back, but he could see the small body flying out into space.

Shiro’s mind went blank in sheer panic.

A roar reverberated through the hangar, so loud that it rose well above the deafening sounds of the howling winds, and Shiro would have covered his ears had he been able to.

The Red Lion’s eyes _blazed_ , twin supernovae lighting up the darkness. Its barrier vanished in another crackle of light, and then it _leapt after him_.

 _Oh,_ thought Shiro, stunned and awed in equal measure.

Before he could think more on that revelation, the Red Lion was staring up at him from the vast emptiness of space, mouth gaping wide –

And he let go.


	3. Chapter 3

Even years of jujutsu training couldn’t soften the blow of _this_ landing; but then, ‘getting sucked out into the vacuum of space and crash-landing inside the mouth of a giant robotic Lion’ probably wasn’t what his sensei had in mind. Shiro got to his feet, feeling at his ribs gingerly. Nothing was broken, he decided. Small mercies.

“I’m good,” he said into his helmet mic, responding to the queries filtering into his ear as he took the stairs up to the Lion’s head three at a time. “We’ve got the Red Lion.”

The rebel was sitting in the pilot’s seat, his back a line of tension visible even from the doorway. His fingers skated over the unfamiliar controls like he knew exactly what each of them did, and as though Shiro needed any further proof that he was looking at the real Red Paladin, the Lion opened its mouth and raked a line of laser fire over the fighter jets in hot pursuit.

He knew better than to get between that.

“Get us down to Arus,” Shiro instructed, holding a finger over his mic so the others couldn’t hear him. “We need to unlock the last Lion.”

To his credit, the rebel didn’t ask any questions, simply tugged at levers labelled with markings Shiro couldn’t hope to comprehend and _somehow_ – despite the lack of any steering mechanism he could see – directed the Lion into a smooth spiralling descent down through the Arusian atmosphere that was _worlds_ apart from Lance’s piloting.

The Red Lion skidded to a halt on the polished floor, joining the half-circle the other three Lions had formed. Together, the four of them gazed impassively ahead, where Princess Allura had said the Black Lion slept.

 _Something_ was waking up, gossamer wings unfurling like a butterfly emerging from its pupa as xie shook off xir millennia-long slumber, xir presence expanding to fill every corner of his mind.

_Oh._

The Red Lion might not have been his, but the Princess had been right. He’d been chosen by a Lion, same as the rest of them. Without another word, Shiro leapt out of the Red Lion’s cockpit, racing for what he knew in his _bones_ was his own Lion.

Allura startled as he ran past her, but there was no time to talk, no time to explain.

“Wait, but if you’re out here, who’s piloting _Red_?”

Lance was right to question, maybe, but there was a battlecruiser orbiting the planet, and they couldn’t afford _any_ mistrust.

“The real Red Paladin,” Shiro snapped, delicately dancing around the issue of exactly _who_ the rebel was, as he darted up the stairs into his own Lion. “We found him on the Galra battlecruiser.”

Sliding into the Black Lion’s plush seats was like _coming home_.

His hands came up to grip one of the levers, unbidden, and Shiro just _knew_ that was the right one to pull, the key to the ignition.

The Black Lion reared up on xir haunches and _roared_ out a challenge to the stars above, one that was echoed by xir other siblings.

“Sendak is entering the Arusian atmosphere,” warned Allura. “We need Voltron now!”

As though in response to Shiro’s own thoughts, the Black Lion roared again, and then led the stampede out of the castle.

“The ion cannon is back online!” warned Coran, and not a moment too soon, as cannon fire lit up the sky in a dazzling fireworks display, splashing against the Castle’s particle barrier.

“Man, those Galra guys repair things fast,” Hunk grumbled, as Yellow sped past in a blur Shiro wouldn’t have believed of something that size.

“The barrier gets weaker with every blast! Once the shield goes down, the Castle will be defenceless!”

“I can give you cover with the Castle’s defences for a while, but you have to form Voltron now or we’ll all be destroyed.”

Over the sound of Hunk’s muttering and the dangerous crackle of electricity, Shiro spoke up. “Listen up, Team Voltron! The only way to succeed is if we give it all we’ve got! This looks bad, but we can do this! Are you with me?”

He checked the controls, but none of them were helpfully labelled in a language he could read, not even pictograms of giant Lions like the caves near the Blue and Green Lions had been.

 _Patience_ , he warned himself as one of the fighter jets drew too near, spitting laser fire at his Lion.

_Patience. Focus._

“I don’t see a ‘combine into giant robot’ button anywhere on my dashboard,” reported Hunk.

“This is _insane_!” snarled Pidge, sarcasm dripping from every word. “Can’t they just cease fire for _one minute_ so we can figure this out? Is that too much to ask?”

“We’ve got to do something,” came an unfamiliar, _male_ voice over the airwaves. The Red Lion leapt for one of the fighter jets, biting it cleanly into half and tossing its remains at one of the other jets.

“Yeah, _combine_!” Hunk shouted, and Shiro winced as he saw the Yellow Lion crash into Red, sending it flying like a Golden Retriever bowling over a Jack Russell Terrier in its enthusiasm.

“Hey!”

“Okay,” mused Hunk, “that didn’t work.”

“Maybe if we fly in formation, we’ll just combine,” suggested Shiro, because _nothing_ was working and the Castle’s energy levels were just about _gone_ and they had to _do_ something –

He slammed a hand down on the dashboard in sheer frustration as he felt the pull of a tractor beam. Black _screamed_ in his head, a whirlwind of fury, but even xie couldn’t budge against the indomitable beam pulling them inexorably upwards, straight into Sendak’s ship.

“It’s been an honour flying with you boys,” quipped the rebel, tone utterly dry, and in any other situation – in a bar, in a club, even at the _library_ – that sense of humour was something Shiro would’ve _loved_ to get to know better, but –

“No!” he snarled, flicking a bank of levers, jabbing at buttons almost before they lit up. No, it wasn’t going to end like this.

It _couldn’t_ end like this.

He wouldn’t _let_ it end like this.

Shiro inhaled deeply. He’d only ever met Zarkon through the dubious safety of a projector screen, but that was enough; with the little of the Empire he’d seen, bouncing from planetary system to system, gladiator Arena to Arena, if Zarkon was left unchecked, if the plague of the Empire spread to their little solar system –

“We can do this,” he stressed. “We _have_ to believe in ourselves; we can’t give up.”

They were the universe’s _final_ hope.

“We _can’t_ fail! We **_won’t_** fail! If we work together, we’ll win together!”

“Yeah!”

Shiro couldn’t describe what happened next, but it was like simultaneously looking at the world through five pairs of eyes, and having four – eight? – minds nestled up against him all at once, all intent upon one single goal.

“How are we _doing_ this?”

“I don’t know,” Shiro said out loud, as much to hear his own voice, to disrupt the vertigo that was having his headspace gate-crashed by so many buzzing minds at once, as it was to answer Lance’s question.

_Focus, Shiro. FOCUS._

“Let’s get that cannon!”

The Red and Green Lions shoved their way to the forefront of his mind, in complete agreement with each other – and Shiro was only too happy to direct them, like an orchestra flowing together, slamming them into the cannon one after the other.

The ion cannon shredded like _tissue paper_ , and a few more well-placed shots – Pidge might have been a little too gleeful about it, but Shiro could hardly blame him – set the whole battlecruiser ablaze, like it was a toy ship.

☆☆☆☆☆

“Good work, Paladins!” Allura was there to greet them as the Lions came in for their respective landings, her smile so radiant that it was visible even through the windshield of a Lion.

Shiro scrubbed a hand through his hair, wiping away the sweat from his brow. Tucking the red helmet under one arm, he turned to face the Red Lion, heart thumping in his chest. Behind him, he could hear the clatter of the other Paladins climbing out of their respective Lions, and then their collective footsteps.

“What’s _his_ problem?” wondered Lance, when the Red Lion still made no move to release her pilot.

“Was he one of the prisoners?” asked Pidge, his glasses glinting strangely.

Hunk’s stomach growled.

“Yes, Shiro.” Allura turned to look at him, eyes sparkling with curiosity. “You never explained – how did you find him?”

Shiro opened his mouth, to say what he didn’t know, but he owed it to them to –

The Red Lion shook xirself, the staircase extending slowly from xir mouth, and Shiro couldn’t tell if it was xir own personality or because he knew the pilot, but xir movements seemed almost… _defiant_ , in a way.

A lone figure appeared at the top of the stairs, one hand poised on the railing.

Beside him, he sensed Allura go stiff.

“Is that –” Shiro heard Pidge begin, but he was already _moving_ , almost before he knew it. He still wasn’t fast enough to grab the Princess before she flung herself at the small figure, but the rebel seemed to have been prepared for this eventuality. The grip he’d had on the railing turned his descent into a vault, over the railing, and with a snarl of outrage Allura turned to follow, like she was going to rip him to pieces with her bare hands.

The rebel danced back, evading each of her lunges, ducking behind a giant red paw –

– Shiro finally caught up, cutting between them and ready to defend himself from the Princess if he needed to –

– there was a shriek of metal coming from behind, no, _above_ him, and Shiro ducked instinctively, half-afraid he was about to be trampled, but no, the Red Lion was simply hunching xirself defensively over the rebel’s. The roar xie let out _shook_ the earth, sending clouds of dust pluming into the air.

Allura froze, looking as shell-shocked as Shiro himself felt.

“Explain.”

Her voice was a frozen whip, a blizzard poised to strike, but Shiro wouldn’t let himself be cowed, not when he _knew_ in his bones that it was the right choice to make.

“He’s a resistance fighter,” he explained, falling back on his military training, drawing upon his know-how of reporting to a superior. “When I first saw him, he was fighting three-score Galra to save the Red Lion from Sendak’s hands. I trust him,” he added, knowing it was probably useless, but needing to say it out loud anyway.

“He’s _Galra_ ,” Allura spat, fists clenched.

The Red Lion made a noise that couldn’t be anything but a warning growl, a response to the threat she poised. Shiro shivered, even though it wasn’t directed at him, just from the proximity alone.

“I was _saved_ by a Galra,” he retorted. “He said there was a resistance group fighting against Zarkon, called –”

“The Blade of Marmora.”

Shiro jerked back, surprised, because that voice didn’t sound like it was muffled by a helmet, which could only mean –

 _Gorgeous_ violet eyes stared steadily back at him, sparkling like amethysts in the setting Arusian sun. The rebel had thicker brows than he’d expect, but that was the only non-human feature on his face – a face that was _very_ easy on the eyes. If he’d thought the humour alone was worth a second look in a bar…

“Wait, you’re _human_?”

Shiro inhaled sharply, suddenly remembering where he was. Where _they_ were. How inappropriate his thoughts were heading.

“Human,” repeated the rebel, thoughtfully, like he was tasting the unfamiliar word with his tongue, rolling the consonants around in mouth. Shiro swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry.

_Focus._

“Yeah!” Lance agreed, squinting suspiciously. “You don’t look purple. Or furry.”

“Unless it’s just his face,” interjected Pidge darkly. His arms were folded over his chest, and he was scowling slightly.

Very slowly, the rebel shook his head. “No, I’m not purple. Or furry.” He looked them over, contemplatively, like he was considering how much information to share. “My father was not Galra.”

“What’s your name?”

The rebel blinked back at Shiro, looking a little startled, like he’d forgotten he was there altogether. “Keef,” he said.

“Keef,” Shiro repeated, mentally rearranging the guttural consonants into a softer, human equivalent. “Keith?”

Keith’s brow scrunched up, adorably. “Kees,” he tried. “Is that how it ought to be read?”

“That’s definitely a human name,” Lance was quick to point out. His bayard dropped back into its concealed form, and he strode forwards, hand outstretched. “Hi Keith, I’m Lance.”

“Hunk.”

“Pidge.”

“And I’m Shiro.”

Keith stared down at the proffered hand.

“You’re supposed to shake it,” Shiro prompted gently, before Lance wilted any further. “It’s how humans say _hello_.”

“Oh.”

Keith grabbed Lance’s hand and pumped it up and down rapidly, with so much force that Shiro involuntarily took a step forwards, afraid that he might tear Lance’s arm off.

Lance yelped, snatching his hand back hurriedly, cradling his arm like he was afraid Keith might have dislocated it, a fear Shiro thought was pretty reasonable. “Right,” he decided. “We’ll… work on that.”

“Tell me about this Blade.”

The three younger Paladins all jumped, clearly having forgotten Allura’s presence. Shiro hadn’t, and he noted that Keith hadn’t either. Judging by the icy, biting tone of her voice, they had been right to remain wary, even though she hadn’t made any further move to attack Keith.

“What he said.” Keith nodded at Shiro. “It’s a resistance movement trying to take Zarkon down.”

“Why would _Galra_ be trying to defeat Zarkon?”

Keith stared back at her, unbothered. “Because it is the right thing to do.”

Allura gave a clearly disbelieving snort, shaking her head, and – right. Shiro ought to step in, before the situation devolved into physical attacks again.

He couldn’t help but notice Coran remained silent on the whole matter. He’d lost just as much as Allura had, if not possibly more – and yet he’d made no move towards Keith, not even before he’d taken off the helmet. There must be something they were all missing.

“You said the Lions choose their pilots,” he reminded Allura, keeping his tone as free of censure as he could. “You may not trust him, but do you trust the Red Lion?”

Allura scowled darkly, but conceded the point with a sharp nod.

An awkward silence fell, as the other Paladins milled around, shifting restlessly from foot to foot.

“You were a spy.”

Shiro glanced sharply at Pidge, a sharp reprimand at the tip of his tongue, but Keith responded before he could say anything.

“I was,” he agreed easily.

Pidge shoved his glasses up, stepping out of the half-circle they’d found themselves in. “The Galra had _three_ human prisoners; do you know the other two are?”

For a single, shining moment, Shiro let himself _hope_ –

Keith shook his head.

“Oh.” Pidge’s shoulders slumped, but then he visibly shook himself. “Do you know anyone who _might_ have an idea?”

Keith’s brows furrowed a little, in that look Shiro had come to understand meant _concentration_ , and honestly if this was going to happen on a regular basis he was going to need a stronger heart. Or maybe more sleep.

“I might,” his tone was a little more cautious, but the words were firm. “Ulaz was on Sendak’s ship for pheebs, he may know something.”

Shiro jumped, startled.

“Ulaz?” he confirmed. “He made it out okay?”

He didn’t like the way Keith hesitated, as though unsure how to answer the question.

“His escape pod was successfully ejected,” Keith finally said. “Transmissions are kept to a minimum to avoid discovery; I know nothing more.”

That… made sense, Shiro supposed, while Pidge demanded, “Can you contact them now?”

Keith sent a very obvious glance to the Princess.

Taking the hint, Pidge swung around to gaze imploringly at Allura. “Please,” he said. “The Galra took my father and my brother; I _need_ to find them.”

Allura’s mouth thinned, but there was a softening in her eyes. Likely the mention of family had won her over.

“Very well,” she decided. “You may use the Castle’s communication systems,” she informed Pidge, not giving Keith another glance.

They trooped back into the bridge of the Castle, where Allura fired up the controls.

Keith studied the hologram control panel for a moment, and then turned to her. Ignoring her scowl, he demanded, “Are these channels secure?”

Allura drew herself up, affronted. “Of course they are! The Castle of Lions is the _pinnacle_ of technology –”

“– ten thousand years ago,” interrupted Pidge, looking thoughtful.

Nodding to himself, Keith drew his finger across the controls, tapping several keys in quick succession and pulling up several… schematics, Shiro thought they were, thought they were labelled in what must be Altean. He had no idea how Keith was reading them, but he must be, since he was flipping through the diagrams with an ease Shiro couldn’t even imagine.

“This model was discontinued tens of decapheebs ago,” he finally stated, pointing to several of the figures displayed.

Allura bit her lip, looking conflicted, but she let go of the controls even as Pidge pipped up, “If you can give me a couple of hours, I should be able to get us a secure channel based on what Sendak was using for _his_ ship.”

For the sake of his sanity, Shiro wasn’t going to ask how Pidge got that information.

“Then that’s settled,” he decided, when Allura didn’t seem willing to take charge. “Pidge, you stay here and encrypt the signals; the rest of us, hit the showers and grab some food. Pidge, you need us to get you anything?”

“Yeah, a snack would be good,” Pidge agreed, already digging through his backpack.

Shiro caught Keith by the shoulder as the Paladins trooped out, following Coran to the showers.

“Let’s get you checked out first,” he suggested. Keith was _stiff_ under his hand, obvious even through the metal armour, but Shiro suspected Keith might make a run for it if he let go.

“I am fine,” Keith argued instantly.

Shiro kept his body language loose and open, but shook his head. “I _saw_ you get hit by that crate,” he insisted, as gently as he could. “Even if it’s just bruises, I’d like to take a look.” There were some things that resembled first aid equipment in the room with the cryopods, he remembered. It was probably an Altean med bay of some kind.

Keith’s eyes darted to the side, but the corridors were empty.

“… okay.”

Keeping a hand on Keith’s shoulder – but _lightly_ , in case that shoulder was bruised – Shiro led the way to the medbay, pleased that he still remembered how to get there. Keith’s eyes darted around the room as they walked in, and he didn’t drop his guard, not until Shiro left his side.

“Take off your armour, will you?” Shiro called over his shoulder, digging through the pile of supplies. Those things looked like bandages… and that one, some kind of antiseptic spray? He added it to the bundle, just in case Keith could read Altean and could tell him what it was.

He turned around to ask, and –

…

 _Nnngh_.

Okay.

Okay, he wasn’t expecting that.

_Patience yields focus._

_Focus, Shiro._

_No, not focus THERE._

With some effort, Shiro jerked his gaze higher, to a spot on the far wall, and tried to mentally reboot his brain.

That… wow. That definitely wasn’t what Galra usually wore under their armour. Keith’s spandex undersuit _clung_ to him like a second skin, leaving absolutely nothing to the imagination, especially when he was bending over to take off his leg armour, like _that_ , with those firm thighs and that pert little ass right _there_.

Shiro kind of wanted to unzip that undersuit with his _teeth_.

He might’ve made a sound out loud – or maybe Keith was just done stripping out of his armour, he wouldn’t know – but Keith was straightening back up, he could see the movement out of the corner of his eye, turning back around –

“Champion?”

Hearing that epithet was like getting a bucket of cold water to the face.

“Call me Shiro,” he demanded, flinching back.

Keith… didn’t look like he understood, exactly, but he nodded slowly. “Sheerrro,” he tried.

“Shiro,” Shiro repeatedly, setting the first aid items down and patting the table.

Keith frowned at him, that little puzzled tilt to the head, and Shiro’s heart absolutely _melted_.

“Here,” he motioned up to where the Galra had implanted his universal translator. “Turn yours off, and let’s try again.”

Even he was a little surprised when Keith made no other objections, simply reached up to his ear and flicked his universal translator off.

Shiro pointed at him. “Keith,” he enunciated, slowly and loudly. “Shiro,” he added, pointing to himself.

The adorably confused look didn’t leave Keith’s face as he mimicked, “Keefth. Shirrro.”

Without the translator in the way, Shiro could hear how the guttural, rolling consonants of the Galran language was tripping Keith’s attempts at English up, but Keith had a strange accent, not quite standard Galran. Maybe his vocal chords were too human?

“Very good,” he praised, and then belatedly realised Keith probably couldn’t understand him. A thumbs-up – no, wait, gestures wouldn’t translate either – he beamed exaggeratedly at Keith, baring his teeth in a proper Galra smile. “Try again: Keith. Shiro.”

“Keefth. Shiiro.”

Well, that was probably as good as it would get, in such a short period of time. Shiro nodded at Keith, and reached up to turn on his own translator.

“Yeah, like that,” he said, once Keith had turned his own back on.

Keith nodded back, looking determined.

“I’m going to need to touch you, now – let me know if you feel any pain.” Shiro reached out for Keith’s shoulder again, slowly, and when Keith didn’t shy away Shiro took that as permission to touch.

Keith was startlingly warm under his hands, the spandex slippery with sweat, and it was hard to keep his touch purely professional when Shiro could all-too-easily imagine them in a different context, one where Keith would _arch_ into his hands as Shiro’s fingers ghost over the seams of his undersuit, peeling them open –

_Focus, Shiro, focus._

“Shi’iro?”

Maybe it was how Keith said his name, with a tiny hitch in the syllables, maybe the way their faces were so close together, maybe it was just that this was the first time they were alone together outside of an emergency, but Shiro found himself saying out loud,

“Your eyes are beautiful.”

Keith looked at him for a long moment, and then he got up and left the room.

☆☆☆☆☆

Keith reappeared, like a ghost, right when the encryption was done.

Shiro almost got up, wanting to go to him, but the memory of Keith’s abrupt departure kept him seated. Instead, he let Pidge take over the reins, setting up the connection to the Blade of Marmora’s base. If Keith could get them news of the Holts…

The screen buzzed, like a burst of static, and then a mechanical voice demanded, “Identify yourself.”

“Keefth,” said Keith, barely stumbling over the foreign syllable now, and Shiro was _so proud_ of him. “I seek an audience with Leader.”

There was a long moment when nothing happened, but before Shiro could start worrying something had gone very wrong, the screen buzzed again and a hooded, masked figure appeared.

“Keef,” he growled, his voice coming out as a mechanical hiss. There must be a voice distorter built into the mask he was wearing. “We are very disappointed –”

“Keefth,” Keith interrupted, every inch of his body screaming defiance.

The hooded figure paused. “What?”

“Keefth,” Keith repeated. Oddly, he was relaxing, the lines of tension bleeding out bit by bit. “Not Keef, Leader.”

“Keeess.” The mask made it impossible to tell what Leader was feeling, but Shiro would bet on it being mostly disapproval. “You disobeyed a direct order –”

“Ulaz said the Champion looked _just like me_ , I had to find out –”

“You snuck onto Sendak’s ship, risking _everything_ , just for this _infantile_ curiosity –”

“And a good thing I did!” Keith burst out, fists clenching by his sides. “Or I would not have found out that Voltron is back, or that I am the Paladin of the Red Lion, or that we _finally_ have a chance to take down Zarkon!”

That finally seemed to take Leader aback. “Explain.”

“Voltron, the legendary defender made by the Alteans hundreds of decapheebs ago – it is active once more,” Keith reported. “There is too little data to make a conclusion, but preliminary testing indicates that a single Lion is capable of breaking through a particle barrier on its own, and the combined form can rip through a battlecruiser like a child’s toy.”

There was a long, laden silence.

“Keeess, where are you?”

“In the old Altean Mothership with the other Paladins of Voltron,” Keith replied promptly. “Also, has Ulaz checked in yet?”

“Ulaz?” asked Leader. “I have had no word from him. Has he been compromised?”

“Yes,” Keith said, neatly side-stepping the fact that Ulaz had only been compromised to _save_ Shiro. “We need to contact him. One of the Paladins had family captured by Zarkon, and Ulaz may know where they were sent to.”

Leader was silent for a long while.

“Zarkon has many prisoners, and we do not track them all,” he finally said. “I will give you the coordinates to his safehouse, and trust you will take care not to lead any Galra there.”

They finally hammered out a tentative alliance – to which Allura did not object, even if she didn’t look happy about it – and reassured Pidge that yes, the Castleship was still capable of flight, it just needed a few more maintenance checks first.

Shiro slipped out of the room. He needed to get his head on straight, and the sight of Keith – still in that damned spandex Shiro both loved and hated – bending over the consoles to peer into maintenance hatches was only making things worse.

He was _sure_ they passed by a training room earlier, on their way to the armoury, and – yes. There it was.

“Begin training sequence one.”

A training dummy, exactly like the ones he’d seen the Galra soldiers use, rose out from a hole in the floor. Shiro activated his Galra arm, banishing all thoughts of violet eyes and adorable smiles from his mind as he charged single-mindedly at the droid.

He never noticed the silent shadow watching him through the doorway.


	4. Chapter 4

With a loud cry, Shiro rolled to the side, narrowly avoiding taking a mace to the head –

– and landed on the floor.

The cold metal was a shock to his system, leeching away mercilessly at his body heat. He lay there, cheek pressed to the icy metal, half-expecting one of the guards to begin banging on the door at any moment –

No.

No, wait.

The soft lavender lighting threw him for a loop at first, but –

He cleared his throat and squeezed his eyes shut. “Lights to eighty percent.” And if his voice shook, well, no one was around to judge.

The sudden _glare_ through his closed eyelids made him gasp, even though he’d been expecting it, that last tiny seed of doubt in his mind vanishing.

He was free.

The sheer shock of relief still took him by surprise, and he ended up pressing his forehead against the metal floor, seeking comfort from the chill and just _breathing_.

He was free. He was okay. Sendak’s ship was destroyed; he’d seen it with his own eyes.

Getting dressed helped, as did putting on his Black Paladin armour, a luxury the Galra had never afforded – the red set he wore yesterday was now in Keith’s room, where it belonged. So did dropping down to the same set of daily exercises that had kept him relatively sane and mostly in one piece for the past year.

He’d just gotten started on the push-ups when the alarms _blared_ , and his mind whited out in panic, even as his body moved, hurtling him out of the door –

– a sword came slashing down at him, and Shiro moved on instinct, catching it with his Galra hand –

– Keith blinked back at him, the two of them frozen in a strange sort of tableau.

Shiro deactivated his arm. He was panting.

In the same motion Keith drew his sword back, and somehow in his hands it shrunk into a dagger, allowing him to sheath it in one smooth, practised motion.

Another loud thump broke the silence, and they both turned to see Hunk laying on the floor. He waved feebly up at them, gesturing quite emphatically that they should go ahead while he sorted himself out.

Keith took off without another word, while Shiro sent Hunk one last glance before he too jogged off, breaking into a run as they cleared the residential floor.

His eyes flickered down, and then back up again.

Well, that was a sight he could _certainly_ get used to.

☆☆☆☆☆

Trying to form Voltron was a _disaster_ , though Shiro hadn’t really expected anything else. They just seemed to be missing that _spark_ from yesterday, whatever it was, and even the Castle firing at them didn’t quite have the same sense of urgency, didn’t engender the same camaraderie.

By some unspoken consensus, the Paladins trooped into the kitchens to grab some breakfast. Hunk’s wasn’t the only stomach growling.

“Where’s Keith?” asked Pidge, putting down his spoon. Shiro couldn’t blame him; it _really_ didn’t look appetising.

Lance looked up from his own food goo. “Mullet? He’s not here?” He looked around the room. “What, is he too good to eat with us or something?”

Shiro rubbed at his temples absently. They hadn’t been able to form Voltron, but it felt like everyone’s frustrations were seeping under his skin anyway, their negative emotions bouncing off each other and amplifying. It was giving him a headache.

“We’re not taking a break,” he reminded the other three gently, before they could do more than outline their plans for the day. “We need to get back to training.”

“We’ve _been_ training,” Hunk protested. “When are we going back to Earth?”

“I’m not going back until I find my family,” Pidge retorted immediately, standing up from his seat.

“Guys.” He hated to remind them all, to strip away at their veneers of innocence, but – “There won’t _be_ an Earth if we don’t figure out how to fight Zarkon.”

The three cadets all drooped at that.

“How are we going to fight?” Lance asked, a little bitterly. “We can’t even figure out how to form Voltron.”

“Well, I’m not surprised!”

The four of them all jumped at the sound of a new voice – at Coran, who appeared out of _nowhere_ , and who was now twirling his moustache. “You know, the original Paladins fought _hundreds_ of battles together, side-by-side – they were like a pack of yelmors linked at the ears!”

“Wow.” Lance sighed. “Yeah, that’s definitely not us.”

Coran didn’t seem too put off by their attitudes, though. “During the last attack, your survival instincts forced you to work as a team, but that will only get you so far,” he explained. “You’ll have to become a real team to have any chance of forming Voltron and then beating Zarkon next time.”

He paused, running a critical eye over each of them. “You should try working out on the training deck,” he suggested.

“There’s a training deck?” wondered Hunk aloud.

☆☆☆☆☆

The training room Shiro had found yesterday was just one of the many scattered around the Castle, it turned out, which wasn’t all that surprising he supposed. This Castle had to have been built to hold _thousands_ , there had to be sufficient training facilities for everyone.

The training _deck_ , though – that was apparently reserved for the Paladins.

Keith had apparently already discovered its existence in advance, and he stopped in the middle of what seemed to be a kata as the rest of them filed in, taking up positions in the middle of the floor.

“Two, two, one, two.” In the control room above them, Coran leaned into the microphone. “Okay, listen up. The Paladin Code demands you put your team members’ safety above your own. A swarm of drones is about to attack – it’s up to each of you to do everything you can to protect the other members of your team.”

Almost instantly, several windows popped open, and true to Coran’s word a swarm of flying drones streamed out, forming a circle around the five of them. Shiro hit the button on his left gauntlet for the shield, hearing at least two other people immediately do the same somewhere behind him.

“Wait, wait wait. What’s going on?”

There was no time to explain anything to Hunk, save for a terse, “Get ready!”, as the drones began firing almost before he was done speaking.

He heard Hunk yelp, and then Pidge, followed by two mechanical hisses in quick succession coming from… the floor?

“Protect your teammates, or no one will be there to protect you!”

Shiro couldn’t spare the attention to turn around, especially when Coran muttered, seemingly to himself, “Time to increase intensity!” and the drones began whirring faster all around them. It was _impossible_ to predict where the next strike would be coming from, not when all he was seeing was one continuous blur, like he was standing in the eye of a storm trying to figure out where the next streak of lightning would strike.

“You keeping up over there, Keith?”

Shiro could have _groaned_. Of all the times…

“Just concentrate on keeping me safe,” Keith retorted.

“Me?” Lance scoffed, tone fairly dripping with confidence Shiro certainly didn’t feel. “I _own_ this drill. _You’re_ the one who needs to concentrate.”

Even battle-honed reflexes couldn’t save Shiro from things he couldn’t _see_ , especially with the way he could _hear_ his team falling apart around him. He _felt_ himself get tagged by one of the flying droids, his armour crackling with electricity, and then a hole opened up in the floor and he fell straight down into an empty room.

The other four were right outside, he could tell, by virtue of the fact that he could _hear_ Keith and Lance bickering, even if he couldn’t see them. Somehow, they were both insisting that it was the _other’s_ fault.

They were both the problem. Shiro wanted to grab them by the shoulders and _shake_ them, but it really wouldn’t do any good. Lance was upset and looking for an outlet, he could tell, and Keith was taking him far too literally.

Shaking the sting out of his hands, Shiro followed the other four back to the training deck.

The next exercise was an ‘Ancient Altean Maze’, to borrow Coran’s words. Though, Shiro supposed a little morbidly, _everything_ Altean could be classified as ‘ancient’ nowadays.

After the disaster with the droids, Shiro wasn’t surprised that Lance volunteered to be the first one to go. His dignity must’ve been smarting from the loss.

And then, Coran waved Keith into the pilot seat.

Shiro had a sinking feeling about the whole thing.

Sure enough, Lance barely managed two steps into the maze before he was howling to be let out of there, practically clawing at the electrified walls until Shiro made the executive decision to pull Keith out and put Hunk in the pilot seat. It got a little better after that, but Lance was still looking a little singed by the time he got out of the maze, folding his arms and huffing in the corner.

Shiro went next, mentally resigning himself to feeling a little barbequed by the end of it, but even he couldn’t have expected – well. To be fair, Pidge’s navigation _was_ impeccable.

It was also tailored to his own stride length.

He supposed he should be grateful that his arm didn’t short out after all the electric shocks.

Oddly enough, the best attempt they had went to Keith, with Shiro guiding him. It took just a few false starts before Shiro figured out the best instructions to give, made all the easier by the way Keith marched through the maze, military precision in every step.

He didn’t look excited about having one-upped Lance, though, stalking back into the control room with his mouth pinched and fists clenched like he wanted to hit something.

They weren’t going to get anything more done, that was for sure.

“Okay, let’s take a break,” Shiro announced.

He was half-expecting needing to fight Coran on that point, but to his surprise, Coran backed him up. “You have been working hard,” the Altean man agreed. “Maybe it’s time to relax a little.” He tugged at a whisker, looking vaguely troubled, and Shiro could hazard a guess as to what he was thinking.

What they were _all_ thinking.

If they couldn’t even manage the basic team training exercises, how were they ever going to form Voltron?

“I’m going to train,” Keith announced to the room at large. Without waiting for an answer, he stalked back out, dagger in hand.

“Man, what the hell is _his_ problem?” Lance sucked harshly on the straw of his rehydration packet, pointing an accusing finger at the doorway.

Pidge shook his head. He looked exasperated and heartsick, and it wasn’t a good look on his face. “Lance,” he pointed out, “Keith really wasn’t trying to guide you into those walls on _purpose_.”

“Sure felt like it,” Lance muttered, but there was no heat in his voice, unlike earlier.

Shiro pushed himself up and off the recliner with a sigh. “I’m going to talk to him,” he decided.

☆☆☆☆☆

By sheer luck, it only took three tries before he found Keith, already pounding away at one of the bots.

Shiro stood just by the entrance, just watching Keith _move_ for a little while, that unconscious, unhampered fluidity, the way he wields his sword like he’d had some serious training, like he was born for it, the training droid barely able to keep up with that flurry of quick strikes.

Maybe if he was Lance, he’d have been shrieking about how Keith had been holding back the whole time. May if he was Allura, he’d have marched through the door with an accusation on his lips, already willing to believe the worst of a Galra-raised. But Shiro wasn’t Lance, wasn’t Allura, wasn’t anyone but himself.

He’d spent the past year being nothing _but_ patient.

The ferocious, single-minded intensity Keith was attacking the droid with soon reduced it to smithereens, but Keith didn’t look satisfied, looked almost _more_ frustrated, a sort of restlessness, _helplessness_ boiling under his skin. And Shiro, he – _recognised_ that feeling, saw it in himself every night when he’d awoken from yet another nightmare, something whose contents he could never recall when awake but plagued his thoughts every time he closed his eyes, and even the thin ratty blanket in his cell was feeling too much like restraints so he’d get up and pace, or work out, or do _anything_ –

“Want a spar?”

Keith didn’t look startled by the sound of Shiro’s voice, which either meant he _knew_ Shiro was there, or he had a better poker face than Shiro expected, which… given the past day or so, wasn’t that likely.

“Sure.”

By some mutual understanding, he left his Galra arm deactivated, stripping first out of his Paladin armour, and then his shirt so that Keith would have nothing to grab. Keith too set both his own bayard and his dagger-sword aside, dropping into a strange stance with his fingers half-curled. It looked odd to Shiro’s eyes – not the open-hand style seen in karate, not the closed-fist style seen in most other martial arts – instead, Keith’s hands almost looked like…

 _Claws_.

Galra, like cats, had retractable nails. Did Keith have them too, or was he only taught that style because that was what the Blade of Marmora specialised in? Shiro had no doubt his prosthetic could block organic claws, but his human hand… he’d just have to be careful.

Keith was _fast_.

He hadn’t shown it earlier, during the team exercises, but one-on-one he moved at a speed Shiro hadn’t been expecting, wouldn’t have blocked if it wasn’t for sheer muscle memory.

His Galra arm whirred under the fingers of Keith’s hand, but Shiro shoved the spike of adrenaline away. He didn’t want to hurt Keith.

Anyone else – anyone _human_ – might have hesitated, the ominous mechanical sound like the warning of a predator, but not Keith. His fingers uncurled instantly, going from a claw to an open hand, turning the strike from a slash to a grapple. At the same time he shifted his centre of gravity, and Shiro could tell he was going for a knee-strike, probably to the stomach or the groin, while he still had Shiro trapped in place.

He wondered what Keith would have done if they’d been wearing armour.

But a pivot was a double-edged sword. Shiro moved his left foot back, angling his body sideways to avoid Keith’s right knee. At the same time, he slammed his left hand down on Keith’s wrist, where he was still clutching onto Shiro’s Galra arm, and _pulled_.

Keith let loose a startled curse as he fell, trying to pull his hand away from Shiro so that he could turn it into a tumble, but Shiro wouldn’t let go, using his body weight to pin that right arm beneath Keith and bending Keith’s left arm backwards, applying just enough pressure to be a threat but not enough to actually break the arm.

“Yield?”

Keith went _still_ under him, the kind of stillness that meant his opponent was contemplating _fight or flight_ , and possibly going to make the wrong choice.

“I don’t want to break your arm,” Shiro found himself explaining, soothingly, mechanically, like he was back in the Arena and Keith was one of the countless others he’d taken down, one of the countless others he was trying not to _kill_. “If you yield, I’ll let you go.”

“Fine.”

Shiro eased Keith’s arm back into a more natural position, carefully, and then got up. He hesitated, and then offered Keith a hand up, which Keith took after a very obvious pause.

“Again,” Keith said. His eyes were burning.

The moment Shiro got into position, Keith lunged, angling for Shiro’s flesh hand this time.

A common mistake.

A sweep of his arm had Keith’s hand trapped against Shiro’s side, and then Shiro took a step towards Keith, cocked his hip, and used the momentum of Keith’s charge to flip him neatly over his hip –

– except the next thing he knew, he was on his back, and that was _Keith’s groin_ pressed flush against his chin, so close that his brain temporarily derailed from _Spar Mode_ and straight into something he really shouldn’t be thinking about while in the presence of Other People.

Thoughts filtered back into his brain, slow as molasses.

Keith must have somehow arched his back and curled over while in mid-air – and _gods_ the idea of that flexibility was going to be keeping Shiro up the next few nights, he could tell –

“Yield?” panted Keith.

Shiro drew in a short breath, and that was worse, because he could now _smell_ Keith, an earthy musk under the tang of sweat, like a wet dream come true –

“ _Nnngh_.”

Thankfully for Shiro’s dignity, Keith took that noise as an affirmative response, scooting back a few inches on Shiro’s chest to release the choke-hold. He shook his black hair out of his face, sweat plastering a few strands to his forehead, and there was a fiery vortex in his amethyst eyes sucking Shiro in.

He only realised he had raised his hand when the pads of his fingers met sweat-slick spandex, Keith’s skin radiating so much heat he could feel it even through the layer of clothes in the way.

Shiro’s mind went blank.

He’d… he’d wanted to stop Keith from moving back any further, before the evidence of… a certain situation in his pants could no longer be hidden, but the smooth, warm musculature under his hand really wasn’t helping matters.

Keith tilted his head, looking like an adorably puzzled feline, but his eyes were hard as flint.

“You cannot have them.”

That non-sequitur made Shiro’s head spin. “What?”

“My eyes. You cannot have them.”

“I –” Was this some kind of misunderstanding? “– I don’t want your eyes.”

Keith studied his countenance for long, silent while.

“You said, yesterday, that you wished to gouge my eyes out as a trophy.”

“WHAT?”

Shiro reared up; belatedly, he remembered why that wasn’t a good idea, with Keith still sitting on his chest and watching his every move like a hawk, nails poised to strike. Holding himself very, very still, he looked up at Keith and pleaded, “I don’t know what got lost in translation, but I swear, I meant no such thing.”

“You said my eyes were – beautiful,” Keith parroted, throwing those words from the day before back in Shiro’s face. This close, Shiro could see his lips moving, completely alien syllables falling out, words that his universal translator helpfully changed to English in his ears.

Or not so helpfully, in this case.

“I did,” he agreed, cautiously. “Beautiful is – is an adjective. A compliment. It means I think –” his cheeks flushed slightly “– they look really nice on you. I don’t – I don’t want them. I _definitely_ don’t want to remove them, gods; they – they’re good where they are.”

Keith’s unblinking stare was unnerving, and Shiro’s rambling finally trailed off, left hanging in the air like a loose thread –

“In Galran,” Keith finally said, breaking the silence, “ _beautiful_ is a word for something you wish to _possess_ , a prize you want to keep, something you would demand as your due, your victor’s spoils.”

“Oh.” Shiro’s voice was weak, and he couldn’t hide his wince. He couldn’t believe how badly one single word had been mistranslated; that couldn’t be further from what he’d meant. Possibly the only good that had come out of this conversation was the way his erection had long wilted, and he let his hand drop from Keith’s side, the heat now an accusing brand against his palm.

Though, now that he thought about it, he wondered what else Keith – or even Allura and Coran – had been misunderstanding.

“And I suppose that earlier, Lance was not insulting my aptitude.”

Right. How could he have forgotten that?

“No,” Shiro tried to explain, as delicately as he could. “Lance was very upset, and he didn’t know how to deal with his emotions, and he needed a convenient outlet for all his emotions. He doesn’t _actually_ think you’re incapable.”

Keith nodded, a sort of wry twist to his mouth. “Humans are so confusing,” he decided, rolling to his feet with a fluid grace that still made Shiro’s mouth go dry. “You say one thing and mean another, and even when you say the things you do mean, it may not be the same ones I hear.”

Shiro shrugged helplessly. “I hope you’re not regretting this.”

“I think I can learn.” Keith’s eyes were smouldering as he stretched out a hand, offering to help Shiro up.

“I’m sure you can,” Shiro agreed, accepting the proffered hand. Keith’s fingers were dry and calloused, but the heat of his palm lingered, long after he’d let go.

“Let’s get back to the others.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art by smoke_and_oakums on Tumblr. Reblog [here](http://smoke-and-oakum.tumblr.com/post/164424655790/my-art-for-the-sheithbigbang-fic)!


	5. Chapter 5

“Now, the most important part of Paladin training is being able to meld your minds and focus on one thing: Voltron. Everything else _has_ to fade away.”

Shiro closed his eyes at Coran’s instructions, settling into lotus position. He didn’t know if it was due to the weird contraptions they were all wearing, but he could almost _sense_ the other four minds in the room, like a dull buzz in the background of his mind, not quite at the level of Voltron but difficult to ignore nonetheless.

“This technique will be essential every time you form Voltron. So, relax and open your mind. No walls, no secrets between Paladins. Come on, everyone, clear everything.”

Shiro breathed in deeply, meditatively, and then out. Slower, the next time, feeling the tension he’d been carrying around the whole day fade away, not quite gone but no longer as persistent as it had been in the morning.

“Now, focus on forming your lion.”

The Black Lion made a sound not unlike a cat roused from its nap, unfurling xir wings like xie was stretching, and Shiro was both surprised and yet not to realise he could remember every minute detail of his Lion. It was frighteningly _easy_ , then, to give his mental image a push, to project xir outwards, and even though his eyes were closed he _knew_ he’d succeeded.

He turned his attention outwards, like the ripples in a pond, spreading out until he could touch the nearest minds, like gentle waves breaking upon a cliff –

Keith’s mind was a raging inferno, but there was a sort of preternatural calm in the centre of it all, like he was seated in the eye of a storm, unbothered by the chaos. In front of him, the Red Lion swished xir tail from side to side, and Shiro could tell xie was practically scratching at the floor impatiently, waiting for Coran’s next instruction.

“Bring your lions together and – and form Voltron.”

Shiro pulled back a little, keeping most of his attention on the Black Lion as xie bounded forwards, _feeling_ the Blue and Red Lions approach from the sides, Yellow just a step behind them –

Wait.

Where was the Green Lion?

“Keep your minds open, work together.”

The Black Lion stopped in xir tracks, and Shiro could tell he wasn’t the only one stretching out a tendril of attention, trying to figure out what was keeping Pidge –

“Keep focusing!” warned Coran. “Only one to go!”

Chastised, Shiro drew back, but he could feel that not everyone did, especially the ones sitting nearer –

“Pidge, stop thinking of your girlfriend!”

“I wasn’t!” Pidge defended himself instantly, before Shiro could do more than wonder, _girlfriend_? “Hunk was rooting around in my head.”

“I thought we were open. You can look in my head hole.”

“Everyone has to be able to look in everyone’s head holes!” Coran called down to them, derailing that conversation before it could go on any further. “Clear your minds!”

Shiro drew his mind back in, reforming the Black Lion in front of him. He didn’t know if it was a side-effect of the mind-meld helmet or what, but it seemed _even easier_ this time, barely any effort at all before he was ready.

“Good! Almost there.”

This time, he sensed four other Lions moving towards him, Green slightly slower than the others, but not enough for it to matter.

“Now, form Voltron.”

Forming Voltron for the first time had been… an adrenaline high, something he still had no words for even after the fact. It was like that roller-coaster ride he’d been on as a child, something that his mother had emphatically refused to get onto and made his father green in the face afterwards, but Shiro _loved_ it. Piloting had been the closest he’d come to that sensation.

Piloting, and now _this_.

The Lions moved to their respective positions, and he could _see_ all of them through his closed eyelids now, like holographic structures hovering in the air. The Blue and Yellow Lions shook themselves, morphing into the legs, and Shiro didn’t actually _know_ what forming Voltron looked like from the outside but it looked right, it _felt_ right; the way the Lions were slotting into Black’s chassis felt like coming together, _coming home_ –

“Yes!”

Coran spoke too soon.

A split second before the Green Lion locked into position, Pidge lost control over his concentration, and in an instant the holographic Lion was replaced by a photograph.

“Pidge!” exclaimed Lance, and Shiro could feel the waves of frustration pouring off him, off _everyone_ , even Pidge, but to him it was like a slap to the face.

That wasn’t Pidge’s girlfriend, like what Keith had thought – that was a picture of Matt and Katie, a couple of days before the Kerberos launch.

 _Shiro_ had been the one to take that photo.

“I’m _done_ with this!” snarled Pidge, ripping the mind-meld helmet off his head and tossing it onto the floor. “Look, I don’t like everyone grubbing around in my head!”

Shiro didn’t say anything, _couldn’t_ say anything, a million thoughts racing through his head, the words tripping over each other as he tried to formulate something coherent –

Keith was silent beside him, his head tipped to the side, and even from the side profile of his face Shiro could tell his brow was furrowed, like he was trying to delve deeper into Pidge’s words instead of dismissing them at face value, figure out the _why_ like he’d promised to do, and the sight of _that_ made warmth bloom in his chest.

Maybe bridging their cultural gap _was_ possible, after all.

Lance gave an explosive huff, breaking the silence.

“Look, man,” he told Pidge. “I know you miss your girlfriend. I miss my family too.” An image of a sprawling, laughing family appeared in the air in front of Lance, as though punctuating his words. “I’m sure all of us – Hunk, Shiro, even Mullet over there – we all miss our families.”

Hunk nodded morosely. “I miss my Mom’s _oka_.” The Yellow Lion winked out of existence, and in its place was a plate of what looked like raw fish, making it abundantly clear what _oka_ was.

Shiro glanced down, at where Pidge had flung the helmet, and then back up at Pidge. “I miss Matt too – he was like a brother to me.”

The image of the Black Lion wavered, like a screen with fuzzy reception, but a sharp stab of panic coming from Pidge reminded him just in time for him to catch the image of Matt before he could project it out for everyone to see. Pidge hadn’t refuted the girlfriend comment – twice. For some reason, he _wanted_ the rest of them to think he was the boy in the photo.

And then it was Keith’s turn.

He looked around at the four eager faces – five, even Coran seemed to be paying rapt attention, his face practically plastered comically to the control room screen – and the bewildered furrow in his brow didn’t smooth out but the Red Lion morphed into a picture absolutely _crammed_ with Galra of all shapes and sizes.

There was Ulaz, Shiro noted, towering over even the rest of the Galra, his furless pale skin like a lighthouse in the dark. None of them were hooded or masked, so it was easy to see the differences between them, how some had tails, some had pointed ears, one of them had – was that four arms?

“Oh, _wow_ ,” Lance muttered. “And I thought _my_ family was big.”

“Your Dad’s human, right?” asked Hunk, leaning forwards to get a better look at the picture. “I don’t see any humans in there.”

“My biological father?” Keith sounded surprised by the question, like he couldn’t understand why they were asking. “He died before I was born.”

There was an awkward pause. Keith glanced at each of them in turn, looking increasingly confused.

Lance coughed. “Which one’s your Mom, then?” He squinted. “Actually, are _any_ of these Galra female?”

Wordlessly, Keith pointed to two of the shorter ones, and one of the tall ones next to Ulaz.

“You have three Moms?”

Keith blinked at Hunk. “You mean, my birth-giver?”

Hunk floundered a little, looking around for help. “Umm, yeah, I guess?”

“Oh.” Keith’s brow smoothed out; he’d evidently marked whatever it was that was concerning him down as a human thing. “They died in a raid not long after I was born; I do not know what they look like.”

Lance opened his mouth, and then closed it again. He looked to be at a complete loss for words.

It was Pidge who broke the silence, this time. “You said, ‘they’?”

“Yes?” Keith drew out the syllable a little, tilting his head.

“They weren’t female?” Pidge confirmed. His voice was a little more cautious, this time.

The furrow was back in Keith’s brow. “Well, no?”

Pidge nodded to himself, looking determined. “I have something to say,” he announced, and then paused. He met Shiro’s eyes, and even though Shiro wasn’t sure what was going on, he gave Pidge a slight nod. “And I’m afraid this may change the way you all think about me, but I need to come clean,” Pidge swallowed audibly, and then continued. “Just so there are no secrets between us anymore, I’m a girl. I – well, I mean, I’m _sometimes_ a girl, but nowadays I’m usually a boy. And I’d really like it if all of you used ‘they’ to refer to me from now on.”

Lance’s continued impression of a beached fish was still amusing, but –

“Pidge,” Shiro called, getting everyone’s attention on him, and he sent Pidge a reassuring smile. By the sound of things, they hadn’t told even Matt yet, and Shiro couldn’t believe how honoured he was to be the first to hear this, the first to be _entrusted_ with this information. “Owning who you are is going to make you a better Paladin.”

 _They’d be proud of you_ , he didn’t say, but he knew Pidge understood him anyway.

“It’s good to get that off my chest.” They exhaled, and then drew the same photo they’d been thinking about the whole session from their cargo pants. “This is my brother, Matt. He and my father were on the Kerberos mission with Shiro. This is me.”

“W-W-Wha...?!” Lance almost fell flat on his face. “You’re a girl?!”

“Only sometimes,” Keith added drily.

Hunk nodded, apparently to himself. “Yeah, I figured.”

Lance whirled on him. “ _How?!_ ” he wailed.

“I saw her – their, sorry – tampons in their bag when I was looking for a snack.”

“ _Hunk!_ ” yelped Pidge.

Shiro shook his head, laughing softly to himself. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Keith turning to him, the same smile mirrored on his face, and Shiro’s heart _squeezed_ with how much he wanted to kiss it –

“ _What are you doing, lying around?!_ ”

Everyone jumped at the sound of Allura’s voice, even Keith. From the control room, Shiro could hear the sound of Coran crashing into something. He hoped it wasn’t terribly important.

“You’re supposed to be training!” Allura looked _furious_ , her arms akimbo.

It was Coran who came to their rescue, surprisingly. “Just resting a bit. You know, you can’t push too hard.” He tugged at a whisker, giving her an imploring look so exaggerated that Shiro was expecting Allura to call him out on it at any moment.

“What do you mean, _can’t push too hard_?” she demanded, instead. “Get up, you lazy lumps – it’s time you faced the Gladiator!”

☆☆☆☆☆

“In order to defeat the Gladiator, five Paladins must fight as one.”

Shiro was starting to get used to the sound of Coran’s voice barking instructions in his ear. They were back on the training deck, but from the sound of things, it wouldn’t be the flying drones coming at them this time.

That same mechanical hissing noise above them made everyone look up, and Hunk made a sound of distress as the Gladiator landed in a crouch, staff in hand, and went straight for him.

Keith yelped, bringing up his shield in the nick of time to deflect the worst of Hunk’s cannon blasts from him and Pidge.

Shiro swallowed his commands. They weren’t going to be of any use, now – Hunk was clearly panicking too much to listen, if he could even understand those orders. He could only hope he and Keith alone were going to be enough. The rest of them were, what, first year, second year cadets? They hadn’t even _had_ proper combat training yet, much less be able to handle _this_.

The Gladiator left them alone as soon as they were down, he noted, waving at Keith to approach it from the other side. If they attacked together…

Lance screamed as the Gladiator knocked his gun out of his hand, and Keith leapt in before it could stab him like Pidge and Hunk, but the Gladiator expertly blocked his initial attack and slammed the butt of its staff into Lance’s stomach. Keith barely pulled his bayard back in time before Lance crashed into him.

Shiro activated his Galra arm, and the Gladiator immediately came at him, staff raised. Now that he was facing it head-on, the markings on this droid looked awfully like the sentry droids from Sendak’s ship…

He gasped as the Gladiator seemed to shimmer, splitting itself into three hazy outlines, their visors glowing a sickly shade of purple –

“Shiro, are you okay?”

Another blink, and the Galra droids were gone, leaving just Keith in front of him, his sword braced against the Gladiator’s staff.

He must’ve been quiet for too long, for Keith glanced back, concerned –

– Shiro tried to shout a warning, but he was too late, the Gladiator’s staff moving before the words even left his lips, and then Keith was flying, they were both flying, he tried to catch Keith but the armour was just too slippery to get a good hold of –

They landed with a loud thump on the – thankfully padded – floor. Shiro watched the Gladiator take a single step closer, ready to roll out of the way should it try to electrocute him like the others, but before it could get within range the light in its visor dimmed.

Allura appeared behind the Gladiator, like an avenging angel swooping down from up high. “That combat simulator was set at a level fit for an Altean _child_!” she yelled, staring down at them. “You’re not even _close_ to working as a team, let alone ready to face Zarkon!

Shiro wanted to tell her that it really wasn’t a problem of _teamwork_ , this time, so much as a problem of having _zero combat experience_ , but he wasn’t sure she was in the mood to listen. He could _see_ where she was coming from, understand the threat of the Galra, but pushing them – especially the three cadets, but really, pushing _all_ of them wasn’t going to make the process go any faster.

He had just opened his mouth to tell her that when Hunk’s stomach rumbled. As though that was a cue, _everyone_ ’s stomach followed suit, like clockwork, reminding them of how long it’d been since they last ate.

Allura’s eyes were still narrowed in anger, but even she couldn’t deny the necessity of fulfilling basic biological needs.

“Ahoy, young Paladins! I’ve whipped up a big batch of focusing food. After this meal, you’ll be forming Voltron six times a movement and twice on the astral conflux!”

Because somebody had to do it, Shiro forced a smile. “Smells great, Coran. Thanks.” Coran had been nothing but patient with them all day, even going as far as to try to talk the Princess down for them, and for that he deserved their gratitude.

Even if he was serving them green slime.

He was about to say more, when – something snapped around his wrist, locking into place with an ominous click.

There was a sinking feeling in his heart, the dread solidifying when he spotted the magnetic cuff around his wrist, tying him firmly to Hunk.

“I saw a lot of solid individual performances today, but you’re still struggling to work as a team. So, welcome to the final bonding exercise of the day.”

“Coran,” warned Hunk, “I want you to think _very carefully_ about what you’re doing.”

Unfortunately – for whom, Shiro wasn’t quite sure – his warning went unheeded. “This one’s a classic.” Coran beamed. “You get to feed each other, like a pack of yelmors!”

To their credit, they _tried_. Shiro kind of just let his right hand dangle in Hunk’s grip, as Hunk inhaled his first plate of goo, and tried to scoop up spoonfuls with his non-dominant hand.

Allura slammed her hand on the table. “Do Earthlings _ever_ stop complaining?”

“Can’t you just give us a break?” Shiro countered, his exhaustion breaking into his voice. “Everyone’s been working really hard today.”

“Yeah!” Keith agreed instantly, backing Shiro up, though his words left something to be desired. “We’re not some prisoners for you to toy with, like... like...”

“Like a bunch of toy prisoners!” prompted Lance.

“Yes!” barked Keith. “Thank you, Lance!”

“You do not yell at the Princess!”

Shiro inhaled sharply, glancing uncertainly between Coran and Allura. He hadn’t seen Coran lose his temper, despite all their failures throughout the day, not even when Lance directed Keith into the walls _on purpose_ in the maze as ‘payback’ –

Pidge rolled their eyes, so obviously that even Shiro could tell from the other end of the table. “Oh, the princess of what?” they snapped. “We’re the only ones out here, and she’s no princess of ours!”

Allura shot up from her seat, and Shiro tensed, prepared to intervene if she were to leap over the table to attack Pidge –

In a movement too quick for his eyes to really catch, Allura scooped up a huge spoonful of food goo and launched it at Pidge like a catapult.

Pidge bristled, looking so much like a cat that just had its tail stepped on that the sight gave Shiro pause, held him back from activating his Galra hand to slice through his restraints.

“Go loose, Pidge!”

Keith flung his entire plate, goo and all in Allura’s direction, Pidge cackling like a demented monster the entire time.

Shiro blinked.

_Huh._

Coran knocked the whole plate away, sending it skidding over the floor, and then retaliated with superior firepower.

Er, goo power.

Hunk shook his hair from his face. “Oh,” he informed the two Alteans, a dangerous tone Shiro had never heard from him before in his voice, “it’s on, now.”

Shiro glanced down at his plate, vaguely regretfully. Well, to be honest, he didn’t really want to eat it anyway.

☆☆☆☆☆

“Do you see what you’re doing? You’re finally working together as one!”

Allura’s smile was infectious; that, more than anything else, was what finally made Shiro drop his guard, trusting she really wasn’t angry at them.

“Let’s go form Voltron!” he suggested, and almost wasn’t surprised when that received a unanimous response.

“Actually, I was thinking dessert.” Everyone groaned at Hunk, who laughed sheepishly. “But, yeah! Let’s do it!”

The route to the Lions seemed shorter than before, or maybe it was just the way he was feeling now, his heart bubbling with emotions threatening to overflow. The Black Lion seemed equally excited, a stark contrast to xir sleepy serenity earlier, until Shiro couldn’t differentiate between his own emotions and xirs.

“Everyone ready to do this?” he confirmed, though there was no real need to do so, not when he could feel everyone’s assent almost before they spoke up, determination and enthusiasm bouncing between them, like they were wearing the mind-meld helmets, except _stronger_. More potent.

“Then let’s go!”

“Yeah!”

As though that was a cue of some sort, the Blue and Yellow Lions spun in place, metal plates whirring as they reconfigured, followed closely by the other Lions.

 _Everything_ was clearer in this form, somehow. Now that they weren’t facing imminent destruction by a Galra battlecruiser, Shiro could take the time to appreciate the way his head was filled with four other minds – and beyond them, the echoes of four other Lions, all linked together like a massive web. It should’ve felt overwhelming, a glass filled to the brim, but it wasn’t, like it was _right_ , was _meant to be_.

He could feel Hunk’s hunger pangs like it was a part of his own, and that made his – _everyone’s_ – stomach grumble sympathetically. Lance’s homesickness, like a tidal wave threatening to drag them all under, and before Shiro could make a mental note to talk to him about it barely-formed thoughts were shooting through his mind, blanketing Lance in _we’llgethome – they’llbesafe – wecanDOit!_

The same went for Pidge’s determination to find their family, flecked through their very being like flecks of cool crystal; and Keith’s resolve to see Zarkon defeated, a volcano buried in his core, perfectly willing to stay dormant until the opportunity arose.

Disassembling Voltron meant dissolving those bonds between them, but between Hunk’s hunger and Pidge’s eagerness to check on the cryo-regeneration pods for the prisoners, slipping out of the combined headspace was an all-too-easy thing, the individual Lions reforming at the mere ghost of a thought.

“Good work today, everyone,” Shiro praised, once he was sure he was going to voice his own thoughts and not someone else’s by accident. “We’re really coming together.”

“Man, that was _so cool_!” Lance burst out, practically bouncing on his toes. “I’m so charged up, I don’t know if I’m going to be able to sleep tonight.”

Keith snorted. “Not me.” He shot Lance a glance, and that was the least animosity-charged look the two had exchanged all day. “When my head hits the pillow,” he slashed a hand through the air, punctuating his words, “I’m going to be lights _out_.”

Well. Shiro wondered if he could persuade him to reconsider.

Hunk, surprisingly, didn’t make off to the kitchens at the first opportunity, even though they all _knew_ how hungry he was and definitely wouldn’t judge. “I just want you to know that I realised when we were in Voltron, we’re brothers, man. You know?” Lance squeaked a little, like a dog toy, when Hunk squeezed him. “Like, we’re totally connected. No secrets, no barriers, no nothing. Brothers all the way. I love you guys.” Keith just dangled limply from his grip, looking rather shell-shocked by the whole situation.

Lance was right – there was excess energy buzzing under his skin, and Shiro wanted to burn it off. “I’m going to try the Gladiator again,” he announced to the room at large.

As he’d hoped, Keith flipped himself over the couch, picking up his bayard. “I’ll go with you.”

The walk to the training deck was fraught with silence – but it wasn’t awkward, Shiro didn’t think, glancing at Keith walking beside him. He was startled to find Keith looking back openly, unabashed, making Shiro’s heart fizz like an open bottle of champagne, light and bubbly.

As though pre-arranged, the moment the Gladiator appeared Shiro took vanguard, Keith spinning around to cover his back, both swords in hand. Shiro blocked the Gladiator’s first strike with his Galra arm, careful to sweep it outwards and away as Keith swung his swords at its neck, but neither of them expected it to simply grab him with its empty hand and send him _flying_.

“Keith!”

Shiro ducked in front of the gladiator, blocking it from going after Keith, and remembering the events from earlier he was careful not to let his attention stray, but it also meant he was too caught up to be able to tell if Keith was okay, maybe he should call an end to the training sequence, maybe he should just _trust Keith_ –

The next strike hit his arm so hard he found himself skidding backwards, and he raised his Galra arm defensively to protect his face, waiting for an opportunity –

Something small and metallic whizzed around him, striking the Gladiator’s unprotected neck with unerring accuracy. It swayed, _stumbled_ , and before it could recover Keith was suddenly there, bashing the staff aside with his bracer’s shield and then bringing his bayard down upon its neck with both hands.

The droid’s head clattered onto the floor, bouncing away.

Keith turned to grin at Shiro, eyes dancing, sparkling like a thousand gemstones –

“Behind you!”

He’d barely had time to deactivate his Galra arm before Keith was sailing through the air once more, ramming into him like a cannonball, and Shiro barely managed to gasp out, “End training sequence!” before they crashed into the floor and all the breath was forced from his lungs.

He groaned, piteously. Keith might’ve been small, but he certainly wasn’t _light_ , and this definitely wasn’t what Shiro had in mind when he pictured Keith on top of him.

“Shiro,” gasped Keith, rolling off him almost immediately. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Shiro coughed, trying to remember how to breathe. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

Keith was hovering over him, concern shining in those beautiful eyes, and whatever else he’d wanted to say died in his throat. He was _so close_ Shiro could count the flecks of colour in his pupils, like they were pearlescent gemstones –

“Humans are so dumb,” Keith muttered, and kissed him.

Shiro’s eyes went _wide_ , but he couldn’t get another word out, not when – it was an angry kiss, full of teeth, like Keith was trying to _fight_ him with his mouth.

“Keith, wait –”

“ _Make up your quiznaking MIND_!” Keith yanked his mouth off, eyes blazing with anger, but Shiro couldn’t understand _why_ –

“You let me stalk you, and then you invited me for a spar, like you _trust_ me –”

“I _do_ trust you –”

“– and then you said you wanted to gouge my eyes out –”

“I already said I’m sorry!”

“– but then you turn up and ask to return the suit –”

“Keith…” Shiro grabbed his shoulders. “Keith, listen to me. I want to ask you something really important: have you been trying to flirt with me?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Keith said, with vicious feeling. “But you keep giving me mixed signals –”

Relief blossomed like a balloon in Shiro’s chest, and for a moment all he could do was _laugh_ , at the absurdity of it all. Keith must think him mad, but he couldn’t stop, not when the words were tumbling through his brain, all of them trying to force their way out at the same time.

Seemed like they still had a while to go yet before they resolved all the cultural miscommunications.

“On Earth,” he gasped out, the occasional chuckle still bubbling out of his lungs, “we just compliment each other.”

“Sounds exhausting,” Keith muttered, but he was smiling again, soft and sweet, like he was sharing a _secret_ , and Shiro just _had_ to kiss it off his face, surging up to lock their mouths together, revelling in Keith’s look of stunned surprise.

Reluctantly, Shiro let go, let his head clunk against the padded mat, grinning breathlessly up at Keith. “I need a shower,” he declared, and Keith’s eyes went _dark_ as he registered the meaning behind those words. “You coming?”

“I certainly hope so,” Keith muttered.


	6. Chapter 6

The moment the door hissed shut behind them Keith was all over Shiro, yanking his head down for another kiss, laughing as their foreheads collided in his haste.

He darted backwards when Shiro made to draw him into another kiss, hands going to the clasps of his Paladin armour, and Shiro took the hint to make short work of his own. He turned around just in time to see Keith toss his body armour aside, shaking his hair out of his face.

Shiro swallowed, eyes trekking involuntarily down Keith’s torso, over the form-fitting spandex – and this time, Keith caught him doing it.

A slow grin crept across Keith’s face, setting his eyes ablaze. He cocked his hip, leaning against the wall of the shower, confident and unashamed as he returned the favour, letting his eyes trail down Shiro’s body. Shiro shivered at the intensity of his gaze, the almost-tangible caress of Keith’s eyes over the cut of his biceps, the V of his abs, and then down further, _lower_.

“Kiss me,” Keith demanded, his voice gone low and hoarse, and like a moth to a flame Shiro was helplessly drawn, a magnet seeking out its north.

His mouth found Keith’s again, and this time it was wetter, _hotter_ , the clunky pieces of their armour out of the way, their bodies pressed together chest-to-chest, hip-to-hip, Keith sliding a thigh boldly between Shiro’s legs as he wrapped an arm around Shiro’s back, trying to pull him _closer_.

Shiro was all-too-happy to oblige, his hands dropping to that pert little ass that’d been taunting him for the past two days, helping to hoist Keith up; and they were the perfect handful, and he couldn’t help but _squeeze_ –

Keith broke the kiss with a loud moan, thighs clenching, and Shiro could feel the line of hardness pressed against his abdomen, and his own answering hardness bobbing against Keith’s thigh.

“I want to taste you.”

It took him a moment to understand what Keith had just said, his brain sluggish from the overwhelming sensations, but when he did his cock _twitched_ , and with them pressed so close together it was a reaction impossible to hide.

Keith laughed, softly, and somehow shimmied out of Shiro’s arms with a dirty little grind of his hips that Shiro rather hoped he would repeat with less clothes in the way.

“We’re supposed to be showering,” Shiro protested, weakly, but he couldn’t pull his gaze away from the little grin on Keith’s face.

“Too many clothes,” Keith pointed out, and Shiro couldn’t find the fault in that logic. His hands settled at the nape of Keith’s neck, looking for a zip or Velcro of some kind, his heart skipping a little. He was _finally_ going to get to peel Keith out of that spandex that’d been tormenting him for the past two days.

With a quiet laugh, Keith moved Shiro’s hands to the glowing knobs aligned against his spine, what Shiro had previously mistaken for decoration. The suit split apart along invisible seams, pooling at their feet, and Keith stepped out of it wearing nothing but that infuriating smirk Shiro wanted to _kiss_ off his face.

Shiro couldn’t help but glance down.

He’d been right.

That spandex _really_ left no room for underwear of any kind.

Keith took a step closer, hips swinging, not the slightest bit concerned that Shiro was openly staring, mouth agape. On his part, Shiro let his gaze wander, let himself drop the careful wall he’d kept between _leader_ and _subordinate_ , because if anything Keith had only proven again and again that he was every bit Shiro’s _equal_.

Keith leaned in, closer, their chests pressed together, and Shiro let his eyes slide shut, the anticipation pooling low in the pit of his belly –

The shower spray started, drenching him in an instant.

Shiro floundered for air, spluttering, gasping, and over the sound of the water he heard Keith laughing.

He finally managed to get the drenched material of his undershirt over his head, and Keith ducked as he flung it at him, letting it splat wetly against the wall. He wasn’t fast enough to dodge the pants, though, one wet pant leg hitting him in the arm as it sailed past.

“Hey!”

Keith turned, probably to find himself a projectile, and Shiro grabbed the opportunity to close the distance between them, to pin Keith’s arms to his side.

“I believe,” he panted, victoriously, as Keith squirmed in his arms, “you said something about wanting to taste me.”

“Yes,” Keith murmured, and sank to his knees.

His mouth was hot and wet, and Shiro _moaned_ , his hands clamping down on Keith’s shoulder, barely remembering to loosen the grip of his Galra hand. Keith didn’t seem to mind, if the way he groaned around Shiro’s cock was an indication. Shiro’s hips twitched, and with some herculean effort he held himself back from _thrusting_ into Keith’s mouth.

It’d been so long since he’d had any form of human contact at all that he was sure he wouldn’t last, and he tried to let Keith know, tried to warn him, but Keith just shook the wet strands from his eyes impatiently and dove back down, wrapping his hand around what he couldn’t fit into his mouth, his other hand moving between his legs –

He came with a hoarse cry, his Galra arm slapping against the wall to brace himself, and he fought to keep his eyes open, watching Keith _swallow_ –

Shiro hauled him up, catching his mouth in a brutal kiss, loving the taste of himself on Keith’s tongue as he slipped his own hand between Keith’s legs, wrapping around Keith’s hand and together they brought him to completion with a few more quick, short strokes.

The rest of their shower went far more smoothly, and Shiro just let himself luxuriate in the feeling of being close to someone after months spent in an isolated prison cell, of being _clean_ again.

He tipped his head back, and Keith obligingly ran his hands through Shiro’s hair, his nails scritching pleasantly against Shiro’s scalp.

Shiro never thought he’d get to have this again.

They crawled into bed still completely naked, burrowing under the covers, Keith looking like he did it all the time and Shiro far too tired to figure out where he could find a change of clothes.

As he’d told Lance, Keith was asleep almost the moment his head touched the pillow, curled up against Shiro’s chest. His chest rumbled softly with each breath, almost like he was purring, or maybe the Galra equivalent of a snore.

Shiro watched him sleep, mind blissfully blank for the first time in… longer than he could remember, for once free of the doubts and worries that plagued him day and night, ever since he was captured by the Galra.

Everything was different, now – aliens were real, the Holts were still missing, they’d stumbled right into the middle of an inter-galactic war they were woefully underprepared for, and nothing would ever be the same again, but –

Shiro closed his own eyes, smiling faintly.

Whatever it was, they’d get through it, together.

This was a new normal he could get used to.

**Author's Note:**

> Saikya: Sanskrit, transliteration. Lit. “metal that has been fused, metal ready for casting, (previously) molten metal”.


End file.
